Pyridine is a colorless liquid with an unpleasant smell that can be made from crude coal tar or from other chemicals. It is used to dissolve other substances and to make many different products including medicines, vitamins, food flavorings, paints, dyes, rubber products, adhesives, insecticides and herbicides. Pyridine can also be formed naturally from the breakdown of many materials in the environment.

How You Are Exposed

Pyridine is primarily released into the environment from industries that produce and use this chemical. Not only does it evaporate easily into the air but it can take months and even years to break down. Pyridine is also very soluble in water and sticks to soil particles although in water or soil, it can be broken down more quickly by microscopic organisms. Everyone is exposed to pyridine at low levels in the air, in food, and in water. Workers in industries utilizing or manufacturing this chemical, and people who live near hazardous waste sites would be at risk for higher levels of exposure by breathing it, drinking contaminated water or by touching it. You can also breathe in pyridine when it is released from burning cigarettes and from hot coffee. 

How Can Pyridine Affect Your Health?

Although very little information is available about the negative health effects of pyridine exposure, animal studies and a limited number of case reports suggest that liver damage is possible. Other symptoms reported by people who breathed in pyridine for an unknown length of time included: headaches, giddiness, a desire to sleep, quickening of the pulse and rapid breathing. Skin and eye irritation was also found in animal studies in which the chemical was touched.